Four workers fall to deaths in Sharjah

Four employees of a Dubai-based advertising company fell to their deaths yesterday while trying to fix a signboard for a new restaurant at a shopping mall in Sharjah.

The four, all Indians, were identified as Madhukkoth Santhosh Changad, 29, Vayinippetta P Santhosh, 28, Rajeev, 39 and Siju, 28.

They were all from the Kannur/Palaghat region of India's Kerala state.

The incident happened in the early hours of the morning. Two of the victims reportedly died on the spot and of the other two, one died on the way to hospital while the other died in the hospital. Sharjah Police have started an investigation into the accident.

According to eyewitnesses, the incident happened when the hanging cradle the men were working on near the roof of the mall crashed

An Ansar Mall employee told Emirates Business: "The men had been employed by an advertisement company to put up a signboard for a new restaurant at the shopping mall.

"The workers were fixing the flex board for the restaurant on top of the mall's exterior when the hanging cradle that had lifted them to that height crashed, leading to their fall and the instant death of two. The cradle appears to have broken from its middle portion."

An executive from the advertisement company in Dubai that employed the four workers said: "An investigation is on to find out the cause. It appears that the cradle they were using to reach the spot broke.

"We don't know why or how it happened. They were working at night because during the day people are near the mall and it is unsafe to do such work with so many people around. The accident happened early on Wednesday morning." The company said work has been suspended and the company was mourning the deaths of the four employees. Their bodies are being kept at the Kuwait Hospital morgue.

Eyewitnesses said the workers died because they were not using safety belts, which are normally used during such risky operations on high-rise buildings.

The restaurant, whose advertising board the four workers were putting up, is called Salkara Restaurant at Ansar Mall, Emirates Business can reveal. It recently opened for business and gave a contract to the advertising company to fix a board carrying its name high up on the mall's exterior.

Police officials have questioned senior staff from the restaurant, the advertising firm and the mall officials to ascertain the cause of the accident. Normally companies use mobile cradles to reach unreachable spots on high-rise buildings and most buildings have their own cradles. The cradles have to be regularly certified by the municipality every six months and a cradle safety certificate is mandatory.

A senior official of a window cladding company working on high-rise buildings said a cradle could crash if the weight kept on its bottom did not match the weight that it was carrying.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.